Workplace Injury and Prevention

Perham Health has partnered for years with local businesses to provide pre-employment screens, ergonomic assessments and advice, and post-injury rehabilitation. Our highly trained staff has the expertise to help you reduce lost time and productivity due to employee injuries, by helping you make your workplace safer, by improving employee selection to match their capabilities to the essential job duties, train employees in proper ergonomics and treat their injuries to get them back to work as soon as possible.

Workplace Services

Work-related musculoskeletal disorders such as tendinitis, rotator cuff injuries, tennis and golfer’s elbow, trigger finger, neck and back pain are among the most frequently reported causes of lost or restricted time at work, according to OSHA. These injuries are often due to ergonomic risk factors, such as:

Lifting heavy items

Repetitive bending

Repetitive reaching overhead

Pushing and pulling heavy loads

Working in awkward postures

Performing the same or similar tasks repetitively

These injuries are preventable; jobs can be modified to reduce the forces, awkward postures or repetitive movements that produce these injuries. The number and severity of these injuries can be substantially reduced through an ergonomics program, resulting in reduced lost time and associated costs.

Perham Health’s workplace injury prevention and management team has the advanced training to help your safety team identify and modify these risk factors, often at low cost. Some of these involve physical changes to eliminate or reduce the hazards, while others are work practice controls such as job rotation or the use of “floaters.” In certain situations personal protective equipment to reduce vibration or contact with hard or sharp surfaces may also be recommended.

Human bodies come in all shapes and sizes, with different physical capabilities that don’t always match with the demands of a particular job. Putting a worker in a job position they can’t physically handle is a recipe for employee injuries, decreased productivity and increased costs. The purpose of the fit for duty pre-employment screen is to identify employees post-offer who are unable to complete the essential functions of a job. In order to do that properly, the job description must be accurate. Our therapists can analyze the job, measure the forces, repetitions and postures that are essential to the performance of that job, and then test all prospective employees to ensure they can safely complete those duties. If a prospective employee fails to demonstrate the ability to safely complete all essential functions of the job, the employer can then decide whether reasonable accommodations can be made to allow the employee to still do the job, or not to hire.

We are committed to working with local businesses to help match workers to their jobs. Perham Health has seen the benefit of this program as we have updated job descriptions and now test our own employees in at-risk positions. Let us help you create a safer workplace.

When employees get hurt, everyone wants to get them back to work as quickly and safely as possible. What sets Perham Health apart is the DSI system. When our therapists have measured the physical demands of a job and the treating therapist and physician have access to that data, intelligent decisions can be made regarding:

Modified duty and work restrictions

When it’s safe to return to that job

What specific activities that employee needs to be able to complete to do his/her job, which can be worked on during rehabilitation

The DSI system is a complete industrial medicine program that encompasses getting accurate job descriptions, designing pre-employment screens to fit employees to that job, and when injuries happen, make sure they are fit-for-duty before returning them to that position.

Perham Health provides evidence-based, state-of-the-art rehabilitation, including the full spectrum of modalities, hands-on manual therapies, exercise and work hardening techniques to help your employees fully recover. We have physical, occupational, and massage therapies and chiropractic to provide a full spectrum of rehabilitative care.